On Mar 11, 7:34 pm, "Dan Luke" wrote:

Hardly a hurdle for humans, given our remarkable ability to adapt.

One foot sea level rise in 400 years? Not too tough.

One meter in 100 years? Colossally expensive and disrupting.

The inconclusiveness is palpable. There is no broadly accpeted
consensus on this possible outcome. No one of any sense -- IPCC or
otherwise -- is predicting a sea level rise of that magnitude in that
short a time.

As far as "expensive" -- that gets me thinking about the Gulf Coast,
and how in the 80s there were few houses along that stretch because
there were Hurricanes from time to time. Then some genius figured out
there were no hurricanes during storm season, so out come the
brochures and in comes the money.

Ten + years later the entire northern panhandle is coated with way-too-
expensive houses. And then -- guess what? Oh no!. Yep. Hurricane.

Oprah et all on scene with cameras -- "Look at the devastation!"

Of course a sea level rise will be expensive -- we build stuff INCHES
above a "sea level" that we don't have the owner's manual for.

I don't see the IPCC-friendly literature supporting the rate of rise
postulated and secondarily, the impacts may be salutary.


And that's only one thing. What about the death of coral reefs, disruption of
the Gulf Stream, burning of the Amazon forests?

Coral reefs are dying? All of them? That seems like suspect news...

The amazon jungle being cut down is not a result of Global warming.
It's a result of agricultural and economic expansion in a once
(relatively) uninhabited area. We in North America survived that
catastrophe between 1650 and 1930 -- our forests were flattened across
the entire continent.

The difference is there's a worldwide communications grid making us
cognizant of the event in the Amazon.

But -- trees grow back. Pennsylvania has more "woods" today than
anytime since 1780. Much of the (nearly) sterile old growth forests
were replaced with more vibrant and diverse younger stage growth.

The Gulf Stream "disruption" assumes that the Atlantic is a steady
state system. Oceans are far from steady state! (As my Navy friends
remind me in pathetically regular intervals). Salinity, density,
temperature, current speed, turbidity and a host of other factors are
in constant change.

Greenland's increased contribution of fresh water MIGHT be due to
increased warming, however there is evidence that suggests that
melting of an unusually dense ice cap remnants of the last little ice
age trump pure increased global temperature melting.


I have a history with this subject. I'm used to being attacked by shrieking
political zealots and talk radio zombies in such discussions .

The recent push the shriek-fests on various "news media" has
contributed to the decline in civil discourse. But we expect as much
from them.

But within our colleges, universities, and academic societies we've
seen a subtle shift from questioning speculation to kowtowing to bully
tactics. If you don't believe me you haven't spent much time in the
aforementioned places.

All sides -- pro-IPCC conclusions and those who don't agree -- for
whatever reason -- need to research, ponder, and then proffer their
thoughts and ideas for vetting. This is a vulnerable position and most
people don't like being corrected, or even questioned. But one of the
"rules" in this process is that I agree not to treat you as less
intelligent, less able, less wise, or less caring because I didn't
reach the same conclusions as you.

But what's happened in *this* debate is that the tyranny of the
cautionary principle takes hold and thus we MUST all agree or else we
are imposing grave danger on all!

Maybe we are.

But we're abiding an even more pernicious danger if we toss out the
civil discourse that has forwarded all our progress in so many areas
to this time, and is the only hope for addressing these problem if
they are as real as some believe.

Dan